That's taller than 18 Empire State Buildings. The department hasn't been able to keep up with digitization tasks created by a 2014 law.

The intelligence community needs a new game plan to quell a backlog of unprocessed security clearances, and officials think new data standards could help.

The OTA will offer speed to the procurement of a new background investigations process.

DataRobot's Erin Hawley gives three ways machine learning can cut down on the security clearance backlog.